Last Sanctum
by TheArmadaBledd
Summary: EverymanHYRBID fic. Nonpairing. Jeff and Vince are in trouble, but it's nothing compared to the trouble Alex is in, trouble that Jeff and Vince can only watch...


Disclaimer: No, I don't own any of these characters. And the people that play them are awesome and I totally do not wish to offend them. Because they win. At life. This is in no way a reflection on any of the actors/writers involved in this series. It's just my own interpretation of what could happen.

* * *

><p><strong>Last Sanctum<strong>

It was getting late but I couldn't exactly say I was tired. I was at that stage where it was impossible to focus on anything too seriously and impossible to sleep simultaneously, so I was just staring at my bass across the room with my dog in my lap. I had no inspiration to play and risk pissing off my mom and dad but it was still a beautiful instrument. I wanted to call Jeff and see when he was coming home and try to get him to bring back some burgers but at the same time he seemed so upset when he left that I didn't want to bother him.

Besides, I had barely managed to calm mom and dad down when he panicked. It was best to let him deal with whatever was going on get him back in. I felt my dog shift and heard the signature whine.

"Alright," I said, shifting her from my lap to my bed. "Let me go find your leash first."

I crept downstairs rather slowly so as not to bother mom and dad who were in their room reading or make them think Jeff had come back. The leash was hanging up by the door and I had just reached it when I heard the knock. My heart gave a jump and after a second of calming myself down I looked out of window by the door. I rolled my eyes at my own paranoia.

After a bit of kicking myself, I the door to the familiar sight of one of my brother's best friends standing on our doorstep looking like he was ready to fall over. I turned on my porch light and opened the screen door.

"Hey," I greeted him. He looked extra tired and a bit distracted. I let Sparky's leash drop back onto the hook by the door. She was just laying on top of the clean clothing pile anyway, she could handle the wait.

I tried not to immediately look at the dark circles under his eyes but to no avail, it had been getting worse and worse since July. "Come on in." He was silent but nodded his head, he smirked but quickly it was smothered by what seemed an almost grim face. Grim wasn't exactly his default mode. He looked deathly serious in that moment and I had absolutely no idea what he wanted.

"Your brother 'round?" he asked me, quickly as he crossed the threshold, stopping just inside the door to where I couldn't shut it.

"No, he got this weird text message and told me to stay inside, then just took off. Mom and Dad are all upset and I think I just managed to convince them not to call the cops." He nodded quietly in response which was confusing.

"That certainly explains some things," he started in that matter-of-fact tone. "Your mom called me up, asked me to come by and give you something." I was confused but willing to listen. This was probably just all part of this whole crazy mess that was going on with my brother and his friends, but mom and dad worried.

"What's that, Ev?" I asked him, finally shutting the front door behind him. The only thing I remember after that is a moment of pain and then... nothing.

"_This, you stupid fucker," he spat out as he dropped the fist sized stone to the ground and grabbed hold of Alex. "Now shut the fuck up, you've got a show to do. Thousands of people are waiting on you." _

~LS~

"Still nothing from Ev?" Vince asked as they closed the car doors.

"Nothing," Jeff confirmed. "He probably just has his phone off or something. Bad time for it but there's nothing we can do." He threw his jacket on top of the car, frustrated at having misjudged the temperature, something rather minimal compared to what else had him worked up. "Let's get in there," he finished, letting the dull part of the blade in his hand rest against his shoulder. Thank God for Evan and his emergency machete.

It had been a couple of hours since HABIT's tweet and an hour and a half since he and Vince had peeled away from out front of Evan's place, having given up on him making an appearance. That meant that they were pushing things already.

"Camera's on," Vince said, quickly. "Let's go." He mentally cursed himself for saying it in that way when he had to start running to keep up with Jeff. Balancing a camera while moving that fast over unfamiliar ground was complicated. The cabin door was wide open up ahead as they crested the hill. Looking at the digital display he saw that the camera had landed on the door and that was when it hit him that something was very, very wrong. Pouring from the entrance way was honest, electric light.

Jeff hadn't mentioned having the power turned on.

When his feet hit the cement, he looked back up from the camera to watch Jeff hurry through the doorway.

"Wait! Wait, damn it!"

There was a flash from the doorway and then the light was gone. Vince reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled the key chain flashlight out as he hit came to the edge of the doorframe. It landed on Jeff, prone on the floor and just for one moment he thought his friend had been shot. When Jeff groaned and moved however, he shifted the light around and saw the source of the trouble. The chord leading to a table lamp had been ripped out of the wall, presumably on Jeff's way down after tripping on it.

"You alright?" Vince asked, nervously. He knew somehow, before Jeff even answered, that he was not .

"Not exactly," his friend turned over and revealed a gash on his stomach. Vince had time to focus the camera on it before Jeff stood. "Fucking machete. It's shallow. Let's go." The usual cameraman picked up his weapon.

"Jeff, we should-"

"The fuck we should, you saw what HABIT wrote." There was a scrape as Jeff kicked at the ruined lamp on the floor and directed his gaze over Vince's shoulder. "Oh shit." He whipped around, light leading and saw what had drawn his friend's expletive. The feral, hairless little beast was on him within the next second and he felt claws raking at his stomach almost immediately. The camera went skidding away and for some fucked up reason he turned his eyes toward it instead of at the face his hands were flying at.

He knew that the camera was watching... but it wasn't the only one.

He punched wildly toward the creature's face but immediately noticed no effect. Vince turned his head back toward his attacker. Just as it was coming back down with another swipe of those nasty, twisted claws, he saw a blur above it.

Then the world shattered. His mind caught fire and every orifice on his face began to scream out pain, scream out agony. He was drawn to his feet but he wasn't sure what by and he moved his legs merely to stay standing as his eyes closed against the pain of that horrible noise, that angry, hateful screech in his mind. He heard a door slam and found himself on his back all over again.

While Vince was in his own little world of agony, Jeff was struggling. The crawling monster was injured but alive and was pushing against the door hew as trying to shut with a ll of its considerable might. Adrenaline surging, he went for broke and threw himself entirely against the door, gripping the machete tightly with one hand.

"FUCK YOU!" The door did not shut or latch. He barely caught himself on his feet quick enough to keep from being entirely overpowered. He was going to lose this without help and one quick glance to Vince said he was incapacitated, rolling in agony with his hands over his ears. Jeff's eyes dragged back over to the door, he saw the clawed hand pushing in and kicked the door hard as he stepped back. The thing continued its godawful screeching, though it seemed to rise by a couple octaves.

He threw his weight to the left, freeing his right hand to swing down. The screech became unbearably high as he felt the ridiculously sharp blade cut through skin, flesh and bone. The door slammed shut, and he turned the lock. He ignored the twitching, shaking hand on the floor and turned to face his friend. Vince seemed instantly calmer. Though disoriented, he was slowly climbing to his feet.

Light flooded the room but neither Jeff nor Vince had flipped a switch. Through blurry eyes,Vince watched an image form over top of and around Jeff. The pair moved, Jeff's hand up to block the light blaring right at his face and Vince to get out of the light's way. What they saw, what thousands of people were seeing in real time was a video of a video. To them, it went in and out of their minds before they could even process it. Nothing could be remembered, nothing grasped, only seen and felt.

Strangely though, even though nothing visually stuck, audibly they could hear the familiar tones of one of Evan's favorite songs. Who Could Win a Rabbit cut in and out, and though they were boggled by the moment, it ended in a little over a minute. The video changed wildly. Throughout many parts of the world thousands of people settled in front of their computers were treated to this new view as well. None of them reacted as violently as Jeff.

Projected on the wall opposite of them was a view of a dark room. A bright spotlight rested on a hunched over form that was tied by rope to a chair. A strip of purple duct tape covered his mouth. His eyes were open but he did not look panicked. He looked utterly gone. Jeff watched his brother's blank, unwavering stare and then jumped when the voice came through. It was almost inhuman and he quickly realized why. Listening closely revealed just the slightest sign of an electronic tinge to the voice, a voice changer. What's more, Jeff knew who it was right off. He spoke as he typed.

"_HELLO MOTHER FUCKERS. THIS IS LIVE AND FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT. PUT DOWN YOUR SODAS, PULL UP YOUR PANTS AND CLOSE YOUR PORN. IT'S TIME TO FIND YOUR GOOD HABITS." _

"God damn it!" Jeff moved in front of the projector set opposite of them, heading for the door. He was stopped dead in his tracks by another voice coming from the machine.

"Jeff," he hadn't heard her voice outside of his dreams for a long, long time. Backing up to stand beside Vince, Jeff watched as the lights in the room being shown flared to life. Standing a few steps away from his brother in the middle of his kitchen was Jessa. His Jessa. Her hair was down to her back, torn and matted. She was almost emaciated and her face was grimey, covered in something unpleasant. All the same, it was her.

"You never found me," she said into the camera. Her eyes were almost as empty as Alex's, her face devoid of life. Her words didn't matter as much as he thought they would. It was the object in her hand that worried him. It looked like the neck of Alex's bass, and it was covered in blood. He spotted no obvious wounds on his brother, but then, he could only see what HABIT's camera showed. "Never."

The neck of the bass came down and struck Alex once, twice, thrice. He didn't make a sound through any of the blows and they had all been rather savage judging by the way his head moved with each impact. Finally on the third his eyes slid shut and he leaned even more forward.

"God damn it!" Jeff yelled into the image. On the other side of the door, that creature screamed its displeasure back at him.

"_THAT LOOKS A BIT MORE PAINFUL THAN I INTENDED. TOO BAD. I WAS HOPING HE WOULD STAY WITH US A BIT LONGER. WHAT A LITTLE BITCH." _A hand passed in front of the camera before it began to shift and momentarily was lifted and carried right up to Alex's face. He was clearly non-responsive and his eyes were shut. Jeff wasn't allowing himself to think his brother was dead but simply unconscious, retreating from the pain and doing what he has always done; going into his mind, his last sanctum against everything he can't handle.

Beside him, Vince called his name. Jeff did not answer. The second time, Vince was a bit louder, but Jeff simply watched the camera pan around Alex's face and then back up to Jessa's. Those dead eyes told him nothing but they were like watching the most terrifying film he had ever seen.

"God damn it, Jeff," Vince shouted from barely a foot away. He jerked around mostly in reaction to his friend's uncharacteristic tone. Angrily, he replied in turn.

"God damn it, Vince, what?" It was when Vince moved his hand away from his stomach that Jeff saw what. The bleeding was beginning to become more than a little worrying. Jeff looked down at his own wound, shallow by comparison, and back to the video being projected on the screen. The same person holding the camera-HABIT?-was reaching out his other hand, with some sort of knife in it.

Jeff was momentarily frozen to spot. He heard a crunch as Vince stepped backward and onto something, but didn't pay it any attention. The knife-wielder, whoever he was, got within a couple of steps of Alex when, quite suddenly, events seemed to come to a crashing end. The knife dropped from the hand which suddenly went open, rigid, and the camera angled up to point at the sky. Two voices seemed to be arguing, one attributed to HABIT of course but the more he listened the more Jeff recognized the second. A flash of the camera landing on Jessa showed her running from the room with a rather unnatural speed. The camera dropped to the ground.

"Do you think you can fuckin' punk me?" yelled the second voice. Jeff watched the almost skeletal form of Jessa fall to the ground, tackled by a black blur. She was struggling with someone and it was clear who.

"God damn it, Ev! Fuck her, get HABIT!" He knew his friend couldn't hear him but he still had to say it. The pair seemed to fight for dominance, each trying to get the other beneath them. A flash of light showed that Evan had apparently retrieved HABIT's knife or had one of his own. This tore his thoughts in two directions but he couldn't exactly stop it. After a few more seconds Evan seemed to recoil, leaving a trail of blood in the air just briefly, and then it was all over. Without explanation, Jessa was simply on her feet and running.

Silence filled the room on camera for almost a minute. On their end of the stream, Jeff heard the screeching of their assailant growing quieter and quieter until he realized that the beast had vanished into the night. On the video, Evan climbed to his knees and moved toward the camera with something in his hand. Jeff recognized it as part of a heavy lamp in his living room.

The sight of Evan's face, a blood trail leading from his mouth down his neck, was somehow not as disturbing as it ought to be.

"The shows over, fuckers." Evan reared back and then... the video simply went black. A couple of seconds later, white text appeared in the middle of the projection. 'Feed Terminated.' That about covered that.

"Jeff, we've... I need help, man." Jeff fished his phone out of his pocket and called 911. It was going to be hard for the police to dismiss _this. _Without waiting for anything from the other line he quickly told them to send an ambulance to him and to his home, describing the wounds at each place as best he could. As he fed the operator information, he watched Vince lower himself to a sitting position, kicking away the remains of Jeff's camera. Jeff took the briefest of seconds to pull the tape from the mess, happy to see it in tact.

"Tell them to hurry the fuck up," he told the operator for the third time after he got absolutely no response.

"To where, exactly?" the operator responded, shortly. He shook his head hard against the nagging feeling that something was wrong.

"Both places, for fuck's sake!"

"Exactly who do you think you've called, Jeff?" His head snapped up at the woman's voice this time and he only hesitated a second before throwing his phone across the room.

"What the fuck?" Vince asked, beginning to sound a bit hazy.

"It was Jessa. I called 9-1-1 and it was fucking _her!" _He walked over to Vince and offered his hand. They were on their own to get to the nearest hospital. He could only trust Evan to do what was best for his brother.

Jeff had always been able to trust Evan in that regard.


End file.
